Man Clarifies White Crosses Displayed at Trump Event Were Not Graves

The white crosses shown in a video presented by Donald Trump during a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa were not graves, but a roadside memorial, says the man who created the display.

Rob Hoatson, a farmer from KwaZulu-Natal, clarified that the crosses were set up in memory of his neighbors, Glen and Vida Rafferty, who were killed on their farm in 2020. The temporary installation, consisting of over 2,500 white crosses, was erected along a rural road as a tribute—not as a burial site.

During a tense Oval Office exchange, Trump played the footage to support his claim that white South African farmers are being systematically targeted. “These are burial sites… of over 1,000 white farmers,” Trump said as the video played. He also claimed that stopped vehicles in the footage were paying respects to slain family members.

President Ramaphosa pushed back, acknowledging the presence of violence in South Africa, but denying claims of targeted attacks against the Afrikaner minority. He emphasized that violent crime affects all communities and noted that most murder victims are black South Africans.

Speaking to the BBC, Hoatson said he was not upset that the video was shared without his consent, but took issue with Trump’s interpretation. “It’s not a burial site,” he stated. “It was a temporary memorial.”

The tribute marked the deaths of the Raffertys, aged 63 and 60, who were killed in August 2020. Two individuals were later convicted of their murder in 2022.

While Hoatson acknowledged concerns around rural violence, he emphasized that the real issue was the broader context of farm attacks, calling them “unacceptable and unnecessary.”

Commenting on the Trump-Ramaphosa exchange, Hoatson said he believed Trump was direct in confronting Ramaphosa with the facts and criticized the South African president’s response as insufficient. “I don’t believe that he [Ramaphosa] was unaware of the situation. The matter was placed right in front of him,” Hoatson said.

South Africa does not publish crime statistics broken down by race, but recent data shows that nearly 10,000 people were murdered in the country in the final quarter of 2024. Among those, 12 deaths were linked to farm attacks, including farmers, workers, and residents.

While some Afrikaner activists praised Trump’s comments for drawing international attention to farm murders, others, like journalist Pieter du Toit, attributed the incident to a long buildup of misinformation and alarmist rhetoric amplified within American conservative circles.